The 20/20 Salon: February, 2020

The 20/20 Salon recital series, presented by pianist Peter Grunberg in his house, will continue in February with a round of four recitals. All concerts will be held on Monday evenings, and each program will serve as a parallel to the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) subscription program that will take place later in the week. In addition every program will feature music by Ludwig van Beethoven to mark the 250th year of his birth. Drinks and canapés (prepared by Grunberg’s husband Wyatt Nelson) will be offered after the performance, providing an opportunity for further discussion. Each event will start at 6:30 p.m. with the music beginning at 7 p.m. Specifics for the four programs to be presented next month are as follows:

February 3, The Good Old B’s: The title refers to the fact that the program will be shared equally by Beethoven and Johannes Brahms, the two composers represented in the SFS program prepared by guest conductor Herbert Blomstedt. Each composer will be represented by a set of piano variations followed by a cello sonata. The cellist for the recital will be Oliver Herbert. The first half of the program will be devoted to Beethoven, beginning with the WoO 82 set of variations on an almost aphoristic theme in C minor, followed by the Opus 69 sonata in A major. The Brahms portion will begin with the eleven variations on an original theme in D major, the first of the two sets of variations published as his Opus 21. Herbert will then return to play the first of Brahms’ two cello sonatas, Opus 38 in E minor.

February 10, Memorials and Celebrations: The Beethoven selection for this concert will be the third movement of the Opus 26 piano sonata in A-flat major, which is a funeral march. The program will begin with a similarly funereal composition for solo piano, “La plainte, au loin, du faune…” (the distant lamentation of a faun), composed by Paul Dukas in 1920. This will be followed by the seventh of the eight improvisations on Hungarian peasant songs, Béla Bartók’s Opus 20, which was also composed in 1920. The remaining “memorial” selection will be an excerpt from Arthur Lourié’s piano reduction of Igor Stravinsky’s “Symphonies of Wind Instruments,” yet another piece written in 1920 and dedicated to the memory of Claude Debussy, who died in 1918. The remainder of the program will shift to the celebratory tone. Soprano Esther Rayo will join Grunberg in a selection of songs and tangos by Argentinian composers including Alberto Ginastera and Astor Piazzolla. The program will conclude with a piano arrangement of “Hail! California,” composed by Camille Saint-Saëns for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition.

February 17, Hadleigh Sings Henry: This cryptic title refers to a performance of Benjamin Britten’s arrangements of songs by Henry Purcell. The vocalist will be baritone Hadleigh Adams, who will also sing Debussy’s setting of three poems by Stéphane Mallarmé. The Beethoven selection will be the Opus 126 set of six bagatelles composed in 1825. The program will begin with Steven Stucky’s 2002 Album Leaves collection and conclude with Jacques Charlot’s solo piano transcription of Maurice Ravel’s Ma mère l'Oye (Mother Goose), a suite of five short pieces originally composed for piano duet in 1910.

February 24, Finnish, Danish &… Turkish: This will be a solo recital. The Beethoven selections will account for two different nationalities, beginning with the Opus 76 set of six variations on the “Turkish March” that was part of the incidental music that Beethoven had prepared for August von Kotzebue’s play The Ruins of Athens. The other Beethoven composition will be the Opus 129 rondo best known as the “Rage Over a Lost Penny.” However, the original title of the piece was “Rondo alla ingharese quasi un capriccio” (Hungarian rondo, almost a caprice). Finland will be represented by two of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s compositions, “Second Meeting” and “Dichotomie.” The Danish offering will be Carl Nielsen’s Opus 40 chaconne.

The Grünberg-Nelson residence is located in the Forest Hill Extension at 16 Edgehill Way. All tickets are being sold for $45. There is a single Eventbrite event page, which enables the purchase of tickets for any combination of the January performances. Note, however, that the February 3 concert does not appear on the list brought up by clicking the “Tickets” button. This is an “invitation only” event. Those interested in attending should notify Grunberg through the electronic mail address for the concert series.